Edith Wharton
1862 – 1937
Edith Wharton was an American writer and designer who drew upon her insider’s knowledge of upper-class New York society to portray the lives and morality of American society during the Gilded Age (1870’s to 1890’s). She became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence, and she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996.
During her extensive travels she became fluent in French, German, and Italian. Her writings often dealt with themes of social and individual fulfillment, repressed sexuality, and the tensions between old-money families and the new elite.
The House of Mirth
Literary Social Fiction
A tragic portrayal of Lily Bart, a beautiful but impoverished woman navigating the rigid hierarchies of Gilded Age New York society
The Fruit of the Tree
Literary Realism
A consciousness-raising drama exploring industrial reform, labor conditions, and the moral complexity of intimate relationships in an age of social change
The Reef
Psychological Romance
The emotional entanglements among four Americans in Europe, where suppressed passions and past liaisons become metaphorical obstacles beneath the surface of social etiquette
The Custom of the Country
Social Satire
A Midwestern beauty who climbs America’s social ladder through multiple marriages, exposes the hollowness of consumerist ambition and matrimonial commerce
